


The Loveliest Village on the Plains

by hitlikehammers



Category: Lost
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-16
Updated: 2009-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-01 03:15:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a side of him that only the jungle sees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Loveliest Village on the Plains

**Author's Note:**

> Not even sure how I feel about this, myself, but it was one of those things I couldn’t get out of my head - these images of state park waterfalls and the Great American South were harassing me every time I tried to write anything else, so I figured I’d yield so I could eventually get to something (hopefully) better. Stream-of-consciousness like woah, plus I took the opportunity to actually get something out of it, in trying out that strange dialogue-in-the-third-person thing, which was weird, but kinda trippy to work with. Don’t quite think I like it, but it was definitely an interesting experiment.

_It’s called the the Loveliest Village on the Plains,_ he says, and Jack - who’s never actually seen much of the South - is inclined to believe him.

They talk about the strangest things, post-coitus. This is a side of him that only the jungle ever sees, and sometimes Jack wonders if the hours they spend pressed against one another are merely the stuff of dreams; so different, so separate from the light of day as they are - as they will always be.

 _S’from a poem,_ he whispers, _and it’s not even about his Auburn but some other Auburn instead, but that don’ matter, ‘cause every time he ever read the middle stanzas it made him think of home - reminded him why he left - and that kept him going, kept him strong._ Jack spins his wrist to trail lilting fingers against the back of Sawyer’s hand, tracing the knuckles with idle interest, eyes fixed upon the growing blush of the sky as their time together draws to its close.

For all intents and purposes, it’s a very simple arrangement. They meet in the same secluded spot every night, long after dusk settles and the fire on the beach simmers stark against the black, and they never stay to watch the sunrise. It’s calculated and it’s particularly cautious, and it’s not at all what Jack expected from a man like Sawyer - though what he’d been expecting instead, he can’t quite articulate. Something more dangerous, perhaps; something risky. Regardless, it seems to fit nonetheless, and they have a system, a routine that involves fucking and relaxing and fucking and catching their breaths and fucking and sleeping and talking just until they can see each other’s face in the pre-dawn glow through the trees - the signal that they’ve loitered too long.

 _It was the first time he broke faith with ‘imself,_ he explains, _coming back home after he’d swore never ta’ set foot in the great state of Alabama again while there was still breath in his body. Was comin’ up from Tuscaloosa, where he’d ended up on accident after pulling a close shave on a trust fund con outside Atlanta, realizin’ only after he’d crossed the county line that he was on familiar ground._

There’s a breeze, and Jack’s intimately aware that they’re still unclothed, that their shirts are twisted in the underbrush circling the clearing; that they’d neglected to clean themselves up after they’d both come, however long ago it had been - lifetime that is seemed, lying still in the soil, propped against an outcropping of rock with their shoulders brushing, Jack’s tattoos pressing into the defined line of muscle smoothed around Sawyer’s bicep.

 _It was stupid, an’ sentimental, and he don’t even remember why it seemed like a good idea,_ but Jack knows better, knows because the tension is dripping from him, stale pain seeping out like blood from a severed vein. _He hitchhiked,_ he flashes a grin to the canopy above them, _back when there were still people willing to oblige; s’always been easier down there - for a native son, anyway - to get a free ride from here to there. Only starts to sink in, what he’s doing, when he sees T.R. Simmons, his old school; when he smells that strange minglin’ of grain and grass and heat that don’t smell the same anywhere else in the world - it sinks in, and he curses himself a fool before the house rolls up into view from out the window._

He sighs, and Jack shifts just a tad closer, inclining his head just a little bit more, sympathetically resting it in the crook of Sawyer’s neck, the settling dew cool against the skin of his back. _Walked up the stairs on the porch,_ he exhales slowly, eyes glazed in memory and never moving from the leaves that shroud the sky, that bar their view of any sort of heaven; _wood dry-rotted through and shaking under his boots._ Jack can hear his voice trembling, feel his pulse wavering beneath the pads of his fingertips in kind even now, even here.

 _Thought about breakin’ in - didn’t, in the end, but he thought about it. Too scared to see new carpet where the blood’d stained the old, fuckin’ pussy that he was._ Jack fights to keep his breathing even, slowly and carefully letting the trail of warmth that leaves his mouth with very exhale stream across the nude flesh of Sawyer’s chest, hoping to calm him, to remind him that the past is nothing to them, not anymore. Who they used to be isn’t anything more than the sun-bleached silhouette of a salt-stained polaroid - fragile and blurry and smeared with the fingerprints of a destiny neither of them is quite ready to accept, like so many of the empty photographs that had washed up along the shore.

 _Five times in his life,_ he confesses in a rumble, _five times he wanted to die._ He stops, letting the intimacy of the truths he’s entrusting settle softly, evenly into the mist rising out of the foliage. His voice is rough, even against the rustle of the leaves, the growl of the surf beyond as he continues in a whisper: _Still don’t know if that was really one of ‘em._

 _Sprained his right ankle, runnin’ away from the woman who came to the door._ His breath stops all together, suspended, and it’s only because Jack is so close to him that he can hear when he chokes that _she looked like his mom. Used his real name ta check in at the hospital, an’ they sent ‘im on his way without a fuss. He hobbled to the same bus station that’d rode his sorry ass outta town the first time, the déjà vu nearly suffocatin’ him ‘fore he hopped the first Greyhound he could catch, bound down-state - not ideal, o’course, but not Jasper._

 _Wasn’ long ‘fore he found himself in Auburn._ The name of the city slides slow under the guise of his accent, and Jack knows he’ll never hear the word uttered with such casual perfection again in his life - in that very moment, it seems essential that he recall the sound with painstaking accuracy, so as never to forget. _Wandered fer what seemed like days; never did figur’ out how long it lasted. Didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, just walked. Made his way inta Chewacla, after while, comin’ up by the falls, walkin’ the lake, and there weren’t a sound, not a sound but the water and the breeze and the catcalls o’ the birds in the night. An’ the moon; so full, like you ain’t never seen it._ His voice is far away, and Jack suddenly understands why Sawyer’s speaking at all, telling this story that makes so little sense; he’s never told it to anyone before.

 _Laid there,_ he exhales, the words almost lost in the fog of his breath, _under the stars for a time, just thinking, just bein’. Watchin’ them watch ‘im back. Talkin’ up at ‘em, bout things he ain’t never told nobody else. Things that are long dead, long forgotten, things he ain’t even able to remember._ Jack thinks that’s a lie. _By dawn, he was making his way back ‘round towards Wichita. Was the last time he saw his roots, last time he ever thought about laying any down ever again._

Jack can’t help but notice the way Sawyer’s fingers clench, tightening against his where they’re tracing the lines of his wrist.

 _It was only a night. Only a moment._ So familiar a concept that it send chills up Jack’s spine. _But he ain’t never forgot that place. Ain’t never gonna. ‘Cause that place..._

Sawyer doesn’t have to say it; Jack knows that he can’t. He understands anyway.

 _S’called the the Loveliest Village on the Plains,_ he muses, less a repetition and more a fresh revelation in it’s own right, the lines in Sawyer’s forehead easing, making him look softer, safer. _It reminds him of here._

Hands wound, neither man breaks the still, the whites of their eyes starting to emerge from the twilight as dawn threatens in the east. It’s a comfort, Jack believes, for the both of them, that their time is up - better that they part ways before they ruin it. Because like it or not, they need this; something steady against the waves of the inevitable, something somehow simultaneously both meaningless and profound; the single grain of sand that contains the answers of the universe, crushed beneath their feet but unmoved, unharmed: their own little piece of the world they left behind.

These days, it’s only Sawyer’s breathing that can lull Jack to sleep.


End file.
